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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908806">quo vadis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavyliesthecrown/pseuds/heavyliesthecrown'>heavyliesthecrown</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Riverdale (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(up to 5x05/5x06), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon adjacent themes, Exes to Lovers, F/M, Season 5 spec, The Voicemail</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:33:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,934</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908806</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavyliesthecrown/pseuds/heavyliesthecrown</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you have to go back to understand how to go forward.</p><p>Seven years later, they are not who or where they thought they would be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>quo vadis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A few notes: this will contain the premise canon has set up with respect to Betty and Archie. Nothing particularly explicit, but it’ll be there, talked about, and addressed. It will also reference the season’s mystery, but I am not a mystery writer and don’t really have an interest in solving whatever’s going on, so it will be skirted around. If you are looking for that kind of story, this will probably be unsatisfying. Finally, I have not kept super up-to-date with canon; I’ve done my best to figure out what’s going on in order to write this, but there may be some inaccuracies where plot etc.’s concerned.</p><p>Warnings: debt, alcoholism, mentions of drugs and drug use, violence, capture/torture, PTSD/trauma - obviously, some of this plays off of what’s in canon, but warning you just in case.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>quo vadis?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>(where are you going?)</em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The I-95 is a dull mass of gray road punctuated with yellow lamps. They are in her mother’s car, a silver Chevy Traverse big enough to live in. He’s driving because it’s the least he can do. A couple hours ago, the collectors had showed up at the door. They busted into the house, so he had gone out the window and snuck over to the Coopers. Betty was setting a bag in the trunk of the car, and when he ran by in a very pathetic low crouch, he said, “I’m not here, okay?” then hid behind some bushes with the decorative rocks.</p><p>“Yeah, he’s not here,” she told the collectors in this insouciant, breezy voice. “Hasn’t been here in a while actually. He came back for a pal’s retirement party, but that was like a month ago. Sorry.” After a while, as if the repetition bored her, she said, “I told you—he’s in Cali. L.A. Something about a movie deal. Look, we used to date, and I’m kind of the crazy ex type; I keep tabs, check social media, that sort of thing. Trust me, that’s where he is.”</p><p>After, she had said to him, very straightforwardly: “Get in the car. Please don’t argue with me.” So he got in the car. She went into Archie’s house, returned with his bag, then drove them out of town. They stopped for gas before the highway. She filled the tank. He went into the shop to buy cigarettes and a cup of coffee. A small box of condoms, too. When he took out his card, there she was, slapping it out of his hand. She hissed, “Don’t be an actual idiot,” and then paid for his items. He wasn’t a smoker, exactly. Sometimes he would have a cigarette after sex, pretentiously, or at a social event if someone offered it. He was only buying these things because he was feeling very emasculated by the whole situation. He wasn’t even going to show her, just keep them in his pocket so he could feel them when he shifted in his seat. Remind himself: I’m a man. I smoke. I fuck. Toxic bullshit.</p><p>Now, she’s sitting beside him, braiding a small piece of her hair. When she reaches the ends, she unravels it, then begins again. It’s very quiet, no sounds in the car, only those on the road around them. The last thing he said to her was: “Oh hey—look.” They’d passed an exit sign for Elizabeth, New Jersey, and it had seemed like a cool, casual thing to say. He felt stupid immediately afterwards. Obviously she knew her name.</p><p>“Oh. Hah,” she replied.</p><p>She turns on the radio. They listen to music for a while, then the news. There has been an immigration bill introduced in Congress recently, yesterday, or the day before that. The station plays soundbites of GOP pushback. It’s mainly old white men angrily yelling thinly veiled racist things. He mutters “motherfuckers” the same time she says “fucking assholes.” This makes him smile a bit, which he feels badly about; the legislation’s outlook is currently “very bleak.” Too broad, too big an overhaul. Same as always.</p><p>Betty turns off the radio. She sits back against the seat and makes a little noise, like: <em>hm</em>. After a while she says, “Think she’ll remember me?”</p><p>“Toffee? Oh yeah, no doubt. You’re unforgettable, Cooper.” She makes the noise again. <em>Hm</em>.</p><p>Things between them have been alright. They’re at this place now where they can say these sorts of nice, bland things to each other. “Hey, you’ve got this,” if someone has a tricky lesson, “don’t let them get to you, they’re just kids” if someone’s got an irritating student. They use that one often.</p><p>Somewhere near Edison, her phone lights up in the cupholder. It makes a loud rattling noise as it shakes against the plastic. He knows it’s Archie without looking. Betty confirms this by saying, “Hi Archie,” when she picks up. She looks at him. He stares ahead. There’s a white truck spackled with gray dirt one lane over, Connecticut plates. A burgundy Prius in front of them, New York. It has a <em>Baby on Board</em> sticker on the back glass. There is a cartoon image of a toddler pissing onto the words. Ironically, this makes him want to run into this car. This sticker is supposed to be funny, a symbolic representation. When he sees it, he should think: Aha. In this car are some very non-traditional, modish environmentalists that’ve bought into the cult of mommy without totally losing their edge. He cannot imagine what kind of mundane, pointless life you had to lead if you had the capacity to worry about whether your authenticity was accurately represented on a bumper sticker.</p><p>Beside him, Betty goes: “He’s fine. No, he’s with me. I’m in DC this weekend. Getting my cat. Okay. Okay. Yeah, bye.” She hangs up. “That was Archie.”</p><p>“Yeah, I figured. What’s he want?”</p><p>“He got worried when he saw your stuff gone. Wanted to make sure you weren’t being held captive somewhere.”</p><p>In a joking tone, he says, “I totally am though. This is definitely torture, completely unsurvivable.” He immediately regrets this. Betty doesn’t react, just gets a very blank expression on her face that reminds him of clean paper. Then she leans her head against the window. Things feel odd, like they are watching other versions of themselves on film. Her eyelids start to look heavy. He says, “Sleep if you want. I’ll wake you if necessary.” Her eyes shut. Oblong shapes of yellow light come across her face like commas. He wonders if they are still fucking, her and Archie.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>One night in early September, he had woken to the sound of a woman screaming. They were loud, violent shrieks, the kind you’d make if you were approaching death unwillingly. They were coming from Archie’s room. At first, he didn’t know it was her. She was thrashing and kicking up the sheets so he couldn’t see her face. A lamp fell over at some point. And then he did know. Archie was standing off in the corner, holding his nose and being ineffectual, so he was the one who ended up holding her arms down and kneeling on her feet to keep her still. He said: “Hey. Hey! Betty, hey! Wake up. You’re dreaming. It’s time to wake up now. Wake up, Betty. You’re alright.”</p><p>Eventually she did wake. She said, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” very rapidly while taking giant breaths and clutching onto him as though she would float away. Her eyes were twitchy and darting everywhere, the whites like little fireflies in the dark. When she calmed down, she looked at Archie. Looked at him, and then in a small, choked voice said, “Oh, God.”</p><p>So they were fucking. Finally. He had been weirdly thrilled at first, vindicated, like he wanted to run down the street screaming to the neighbors: See? You see? I knew it. This whole time, her, him, her wanting him. I fucking knew it. Then he experienced a couple intensely self-aware minutes. He had always been afraid of this moment because of how awful he would feel, but really, it wasn’t so bad. He was making it through, upright, breathing. There was some ringing in his ears, a dull ache on his cheek where she scratched him while dreaming. Otherwise, he wasn’t actually feeling much of anything. Then Archie started to say, “Hey, Jug, listen man—” and he got his things and left.</p><p>Archie mostly avoided him in the days after. Betty cornered him in the Teacher’s Lounge the following morning. She was braver than the soldier apparently. That was unsurprising. He let her stop him. He was very tired of his involvement with these two people and it seemed like the best way to make it end. Betty stood in front of him, twisting her hands. “Jug, I am sorry if it hurt you,” she said.</p><p>“It didn’t. Everything’s fine.” She moved between him and the door. He sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Was I surprised? Yeah. But it’s not a problem. Really isn’t. You and I, we’re good.”</p><p>“I honestly didn’t think you would care.”</p><p>“I feel like you’re deliberately trying to make this into a situation.”</p><p>“I guess I just thought that we’re not really friends anymore. Not just you and me. None of us are. We may call ourselves that but it’s not really true, is it?” She paused, then in a quieter voice, asked, “Are we friends?” He didn’t know how to answer or understand why she was asking, so he crossed his arms and tried to look bored. “Do you want to fuck me? Be with me, love me, have anything to do with me at all?”</p><p>These questions unnerved him. He was somewhat certain if he said yes, something would happen, and he didn’t want anything to. All he wanted was to get drunk even though it was morning, that was it. So after work, he bought a handle of Jim Beam and drank it down in the bunker like it was the end of the world and he was the last man alive. Truthfully, he did want to fuck her, but that had no emotional component to it. He wanted to fuck her because he wanted to fuck somebody. He was feeling useless and pathetic, lonely maybe, and she looked good. Different, but still so pretty. Hot as hell. She was toned, and her hair was long now, curling down her back like a soft, shiny waterfall. He imagined it brushing across his chest as she rode him, wrapping it around his hand and guiding her head as she blew him. But that was basically all he wanted from her at the moment. He felt like such a piece of shit, nothing more than a sack of skin holding a sludgy, putrid mix of bones and blood and whiskey, that he didn’t want to be with or love anyone.</p><p>Admittedly, he did feel some kind of possessiveness over her. This was an uncomfortable realization, and he wondered whether he was part of a larger problem intellectual websites wrote think-pieces on toxic masculinity about. She was his ex, and it was a pretty shitty thing, his best friend banging his ex. But then he thought: Well, she’s just an ex, isn’t she? And Archie isn’t really my best friend, is he? He didn’t think this in a spiteful sense, just a factual one. He had a few exes now, and he was pretty sure they were all sleeping with other people. His thoughts on that were: Good for them. And, he actually had no idea what Archie had been up to since high school. All he knew was “fought in a war.” Apparently, he’d been pretty decent at it, got a medal or two. Betty was with the FBI, training. Those were more or less the facts he knew about them. So it seemed pretty juvenile to get so worked up over people who were basically strangers to him now.</p><p>He did feel some affection for her still—he hoped she had a good life, hoped she was doing well, happy, healthy, that sort of thing. He remembered some parts of their time together very fondly. He did still think about her. Now, it was when he saw visual reminders of her, like his tattoo in the dinged mirror before stepping into the shower, the shirt she used to like to wear at the bottom of his drawer, the book he wrote on the shelf. Sometimes, when he had his hand around his dick, he would get very clear flashes of her as he was coming. But then other times, he’d go weeks, months even, without having thought about her at all. So maybe that was still love. But personally, he would not call it that. That made him incredibly sad to realize. He felt that perhaps he had betrayed her in some way. Then he thought about how stupid that was. Kids were so dumb. They attached longevity to deep promises they didn’t know they couldn’t keep. Obviously that wasn’t their fault. Their experiences were too limited, too microcosmic to know better. But the truth was, there had been other women, and when he said to them, “I love you,” he had actually meant it. He had experienced moments of happiness with them, real happiness, not even some muted version of it. When you were happy, you didn’t consider it in superlative terms; you just felt it completely.</p><p>In the morning, he arrived at school greasy and hungover. He sloppily wrote some quotes on the board, things he would know even if he lost recollection of himself. <em>When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the dark movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. The road must eventually lead to the whole world. </em>“Write down what books these are from,” he told his class. Pop quiz. Then he went to the bathroom and vomited his night up. He felt better after that, at least in a physical sense. Mentally, he was experiencing a number of feelings about the situation, which had the effect of deeply embarrassing him for concerning himself over such unsophisticated issues. Who cared who the girl he’d dated seven years ago was sleeping with now? He felt that he shouldn’t. Really, the only acceptable emotions based on the present facts were apathy or a sarcastic peace. There was a depressingly poetic irony to returning home after seven years and witnessing the continuation of an event that had been completely hurtful to him, as though time had stood still, necessitating his viewership in order to continue. It was like he was trapped in some sort of game, running in circles, unable to advance to the next level because he had forgotten something necessary along the way. He was getting the sense it was his total humiliation. But it would pass. He knew because it had before. Anyway, he wasn’t about to go around displaying his emotions for public consumption.</p><p>Eventually, he went back to Archie’s house. When Archie answered the door, he looked marginally guilty and said, “Go on, hit me. I deserve it.” It was very tempting but it was important he be the bigger person. He knew that Archie felt bad every time they crossed paths, and he liked the idea of Archie feeling like shit. Jughead wasn’t sure if his spitefulness was totally because of Archie, but he thought: Whatever. Make him feel guilty. Make him feel as bad as I do. So he said, “I’m going to bed,” and pushed past him into the house.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They are parked in the lot of a Dunkin Donuts in Chester, Pennsylvania. He had wanted to stretch his legs a bit, get some fresh air, so he’s smoking one of his cigarettes and leaning against the car. The engine is off but the window on his side is rolled down. Betty is still sleeping against hers. It’s the end of September now. The air is crisp, and when there’s a breeze, it scratches against his skin a bit, like the scrape of a dog’s teeth. There is an orange poster in the store window advertising seasonal donuts. They’re stacked together, overlapping, as if that wouldn’t be a sticky mess. One is covered in neon orange icing and has a black spider piped on it. Another is bright purple, almost indigo. He is counting the sprinkles on the donut with white icing when he hears a noise behind him. He turns. Betty is awake. She is breathing heavily, pressing her hand against her breastbone like she’s just finished exercising.</p><p>“Jesus.” He shakes off the ash that had fallen onto his hand. “You scared me.”</p><p>“Sorry. Got disoriented.” She stretches her arms in front of her, then twists at her waist. Her back cracks. “Can I have one?”</p><p>“You bought them.”</p><p>She gets out of the car and comes around to his side. He offers a light and smells the tangy, sour scent of sleep on her as she leans towards the flame. “You smoke now?” he asks. She coughs this little cough that sounds like a tiny animal sneezing, which is his answer.</p><p>“This is my third one of these maybe. My mom used to tell me I shouldn’t ever have one because then I’d get addicted, but—” She shrugs, and wraps her free arm around herself, cradling her elbow. “I don’t see the appeal. It tastes like shit and I don’t feel anything from it. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.”</p><p>“Different immunities, different weaknesses.”</p><p>“Like alcohol?”</p><p>He taps the filter. The ash falls to the ground. “Like sex?”</p><p>She takes a small drag and exhales. She looks like a total amateur, but it’s still pretty hot. “Yeah, like sex,” she says.</p><p>He is momentarily angry with her. She has tossed out some honesty with the same caution she’s using to flick her cigarette now, which is not very much at all. Now he’ll have to reciprocate. So he inhales. Exhales. Replies, “Yeah, like alcohol.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When they pass Baltimore, she makes a phone call. The guy she talks to is named Glen. Betty tells him that she’ll be there in an hour and to pack any extra tins of the cat’s food. Then she says no, she can’t hang out, she’s has other errands to run, which is how he figures out she’s having sex with Glen. This makes him feel strange initially. His stomach pulls, his heart rate increases, and then everything returns to normal. Internally, he knows that she has had sex with other people. This is a fact that rests in his head. So now one of them has a name. In an hour, a face. It’s not so different from what he knew before. Jughead feels that this is a mature response, and mentally, he praises himself for it.</p><p>Betty apologies when she hangs up. He doesn’t know what for, so he tells her it’s all good. She reaches into a waxed paper bag on the dash. They had gotten coffees and a dozen donut holes to share back in Chester. Jelly spills onto her hand when she bites into the donut. She says “shoot,” and looks around for a napkin while keeping her hand very still. In the highway light, it looks like congealed, lumpy blood. She sucks it off and wipes her hand on her jeans.</p><p>“Hey, if you have plans or whatever, you should go do your thing,” he says. “Don’t feel like you have to cancel on my account.”</p><p>“Okay. Thanks, that’s kind of you to say. I don’t have any. But yeah, same with you.”</p><p>“I will definitely keep you apprised of any and all plans I’ve made for this road trip I super thought-out,” he says wryly. He finds himself smiling when she laughs, and it occurs to him he has not heard her laugh very much at all. “Who is this guy, anyway? I’m not going to be staring down the barrel of a gun if I drop you off, right?”</p><p>“Glen? No, he’s harmless. He’s from the midwest, I think.”</p><p>“He’s cool with you and Archie like, hanging out?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t know. We just see each other sometimes. It’s like an open thing.” She shifts and tucks one of her legs under her. “You know, it’s just sex there with Archie. Nothing serious. I know what he’s about.”</p><p>“Do you? I don’t. What’s he about?”</p><p>“Oh, you know,” she says, completely casually. “Just another dick who’s only capable of existing in the world if he’s its hero.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Men.”</p><p>“Hey now.”</p><p>She snorts. “You really want to be on the side of defending men in this day and age?”</p><p>“No, you’re right. Guess I don’t. Okay so, why fuck him then?”</p><p>“Why not? He’s there. It’s easy enough. I don’t have to like him very much to fuck him, do I?”</p><p>She is staring out of her window with her chin propped in her hand. Her voice is even but distant, like it has been filtered through wires and fed through the radio. Strangely, he finds himself wondering if she has ever killed anyone before. What kinds of physical pain she has inflicted, on whom.</p><p>“I suppose you don’t,” he says. “This is admittedly very weird, talking to you about this.”</p><p>“I know. It kind of feels like we’re talking about something very politically incorrect.”</p><p>“Just about.”</p><p>“Anyway, what about you? Tabitha? She’s so pretty.” Betty turns to face him, and says this in a very positive, complimentary way, like she’s trying to convince him of it, or seem very casual about everything.</p><p>“Yeah. She’s really nice too. Super smart. But I wouldn’t want to drag her into any of my shit. Not that I could. Her head seems screwed on right.”</p><p>“How much do you need anyway?”</p><p>“From you? Nothing. Don’t start getting ideas.”</p><p>“How much do they need from you?”</p><p>Jughead switches lanes just for something to do. “Twenty grand. Another eight at the card company. They’re more hands off about it, though, mostly letters and calls. It’s annoying but avoidable.”</p><p>“So those guys from earlier—not from the bank?”</p><p>“Not exactly. That was more of a hush-hush deal.”</p><p>“With a loan shark.”</p><p>“With a private lender.”</p><p>“With a loan shark.”</p><p>“Fine. Yes, the private lender has some sharp teeth. Happy now?”</p><p>“Of course not.” Betty looks ahead. Her lips become a thin line. She begins bending her iced coffee straw between her thumb and index finger. It makes a small flicking noise every time she loses her grip on it.</p><p>“Look, it’ll be fine,” he says. “I’ll get it sorted. Really, don’t waste the real estate thinking about it. But thanks for this. It’s probably not a bad move, skipping town for the weekend, letting the dust settle.”</p><p>“Yeah, no problem. Happy to help.”</p><p>She turns on the radio and fiddles for a bit. She settles on Don McLean, and glances at him. He makes a sound of agreement since it’s a long song. He taps the beat on the wheel and hums along. Betty resumes staring out the window. In the glass, he sees the reflection of her lips move. <em>Well I know that you’re in love with him, ‘cause I saw you dancing in the gym.</em> She is singing quietly to herself.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They reach DC around ten. Glen lives in a row house in Adams Morgan. The street is lined with them, all different colors and facades like a mismatched tea set. He is slightly amused when Betty points to one and says, “That's it. No wait, sorry. That one down there, I think.” She checks her phone. It ends up being one of the houses in the middle.</p><p>Glen looks slightly older than the both of them, late twenties, early thirties maybe. He has an unremarkable face, blond scruff around his jaw, neatly trimmed hair. He is wearing a Georgetown t-shirt. Jughead tries to remember if Betty had mentioned that. He feels positive he knew that fact before seeing the shirt. The interaction is very quick and efficient. Jughead watches it from the car. He’d taken out his cigarettes, thinking he’d pass time that way, but Betty is coming back down the walk before he can find his lighter. He puts the cigarettes away. She gets in the car.</p><p>“Okay! All set.” She unzips the pet carrier, and a fluffy, white-haired cat raises its head up and stretches its neck. She has brown fur on her face, and piercing eyes. “Jug, this is Toffee.”</p><p>“Hey, hey. Look at this furball.” He holds his hand under the cat’s nose before offering a small chin scratch. “Nice to meet you, fluff. I’m Jug. Hope we can be pals, which means please don’t sleep on my face the next couple days, yeah?” To Betty, he says, “She’s damn cute.”</p><p>This makes her smile widely. Her teeth glint in the dark. “Thanks. I think so. She’s a Ragdoll.”</p><p>“Ouch. Not to her face, Cooper.”</p><p>“That’s her breed.”</p><p>“Oh. Well then I guess that’s fine.” He starts the car again. “Where to?”</p><p>Betty lives in a squat brick building. He finds a spot on a nearby street to park, and when she laughs at the fact it takes him a couple tries to maneuver the car, he grumbles, “I’ve been in New York, what did you expect?” The steps up to her apartment are uneven and peeling with paint. At her door, Betty apologizes for the mess. “I didn’t have a chance to tidy up,” she says. He holds up his hands. Since she is transporting the cat and her things, he is carrying Betty’s bag. Her weekender slips off his shoulder to the crook of his elbow with the movement.</p><p>Betty’s apartment is chaotic and disorganized. Brown boxes are stacked between cheap, mismatched lamps in lopsided towers. Grisly photos and newspaper clippings are taped to the wall, yellowing and curling at the edges. The space smells stale, like dying sunlight and trapped air. There is a film of dust over the floor, and a few rectangles of cleaner hardwood near the TV, where a couch and coffee table may have once been. It does not strike him as a very relaxing place to live.</p><p>“I warned you,” she says.</p><p>“No, it’s fine. It’s nice. Trust me, you should’ve seen mine.”</p><p>Betty sets about feeding Toffee. She tells him to make himself comfortable. There is no seating, only a small wooden table with a single chair, which she has set the cat’s things on. Her bed seems too familiar, even though he supposes she will probably have him sleep there since there is no other available furniture. He goes to her bookshelf. It’s made of particle board and not very packed. There are some Psychology textbooks with yellow <em>used </em>stickers on their spines, the classic Transcendentalists—Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau—along with <em>Norton’s Anthology</em>. A stack of FBI training manuals, a couple cookbooks. Then half a shelf lined with copies of his book.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He had written <em>The Outcasts</em> on and off since he was eighteen, and when he was twenty-three, it’d been published. It had started as a place where he felt all his raging adolescent feelings in angry dialogue and bad metaphors. It was college, and you didn’t openly feel your feelings there, you just got drunk and made a fool of yourself because of them. Then time passed. He wrote other things. Whenever he would return to it and reread passages, it was increasingly with a sort of wistful, nostalgic detachment. I’m not as sad anymore, he would realize each time. It doesn’t hurt as much. Eventually, he met someone, a girl from one of his seminars with wild, turbulent hair. Her name was Debbie, and she liked to challenge his opinions with eloquent, equanimous counterpoints to see him get flustered. “It’s quite hot when you do,” she told him the first time they went out, and he’d felt undeniably happy. That was its own type of sadness.</p><p>He edited the manuscript, fell into sentences and rearranged the words like puzzle pieces. The process had the effect of sifting away the underlying reality. He became removed from it, an external entity shuffling pieces around a board. He wrote about things that never happened, conversations they’d never had. It was still about her in a way. The foundation would always be there. But in another, it was also just a story. Just fiction.</p><p>Then, he sold it. For a long time, he mulled over the dedication. He thought maybe something inspiring at first. <em>To outcasts everywhere. </em>Maybe his family, the Serpents. Betty. He tried many variations of that, typing it out on the page to see the shape of the words. It never looked right. In the end, he told his editor to put a small image of a three-point crown and sketched an approximation of it on a napkin.</p><p>He had a good feeling she would contact him the day the book was set to be released. That was how they operated now, blipping into each other’s lives in short, textual bursts at big events, then disappearing until the next one. They did birthdays, holidays sometimes, graduation. Once on LinkedIn, he saw on his feed that she posted an update with a short message saying how grateful and excited she was for getting into an internship program. It was with the FBI. He actually really hated the braggadocio but he liked the contents, so he liked the post. He had spent the day wondering whether he should follow up with something more personal, too. Eventually, he did: <em>Hey, awesome news about the internship, hope it’s a great time. </em>She replied immediately: <em>Thank you! I’m so excited about it. What about you, any cool summer plans? </em>That summer, he would be working at the library, scanning and shelving returns. All the internships he was interested in were unpaid and in New York, which was the kind of dichotomy made for someone other than him. He hadn’t responded.</p><p>Betty’s message arrived in the morning. It was there waiting for him when he woke, bookended by his alarm and email subscriptions. Jughead showered and dressed, then sat at his desk to read it. He felt the strange desire to be clean and put together in front of it. It said: <em>Hey! Just wanted to say congrats on the book! So proud of you, always knew you could do it. Hope you’re well!</em></p><p>His thinking had progressed like this. First he thought: That was really nice of her. Then he made coffee and read it some more. He decided that actually, it wasn’t nice. She had invaded his life because she “just wanted” to say “congrats.” Like any other additional, unabbreviated sentiment was so laborious she couldn’t even spare the time for it. She was proud, always knew he had it in him, but he supposed not proud or knowledgeable enough to stick around and see it materialize. She “hoped he was well” because she didn’t actually know if he was or not. It was apathy veneered in niceness, a packaged convenience store pastry that tasted sweet but sat in his stomach heavily afterwards. By midday, he sincerely hoped she’d go fuck herself.</p><p>He had gotten pretty drunk at his book launch. Actually it’d been one of the drunkest times of his life. There had been a small event with some appetizers, pigs in a blanket, olives, that kind of thing. Open bar. At first, it had started as celebratory drinking. People handed him glasses of whiskey and clapped him on the back saying “atta boy” and “living the dream.” Then he got drunker and realized the dream sort of fucking sucked. People stopped to congratulate him, told him how much they were looking forward to reading the book, then slinked past to catch up with some agent or editor. He got the sense he was something life was happening around, like an ice sculpture or piece of art. He was a squiggly line, a hazy cloud, some nebulous, floating entity zigging to his own beat, at the launch for his own book.</p><p>He had taken a girl home. She’d asked him to sign a copy of the book, but they were all already signed. So he wrote his phone number instead. It was so lame. He sloppily kissed her in the back of the car his publisher provided, fallen over when he exited the vehicle and accidentally taken her down, too. In his apartment, he fumbled around with his pants, touched himself for a bit trying to get hard, then said, “Sorry, dick’s not working tonight I’m afraid,” and passed out snoring. He remembered all this because she told him the following morning in clinical detail. Mentally, he had no recollection of the events. Weirdly, he was not embarrassed. You had to care about something to get embarrassed, and he didn’t really care about this girl. Maybe she would tell her friends as they sipped mimosas at brunch, and they would all share a laugh about his poor performance in a vulnerable moment. Except he had basically put all his vulnerable moments out into the world in print, and was currently asking people to pay twenty-four bucks to experience the magic in hardback. Fourteen in paperback, in May. So if she wanted to have a laugh at his expense, that was fine. After the girl had left, he had responded: <em>Thanks, appreciate it, </em>to Betty’s message. That was the last thing they had said to each other before meeting again in Riverdale.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Betty sets the cat’s bowl down. She comes over to the shelf. “Ever meet anyone with more copies than that?”</p><p>“Can’t say that I have. You may be my biggest fan.”</p><p>She explains each one to him, pulling them from the shelf. A hardback, her first copy. She had bought it from an independent bookstore and waited outside for it to open. It’d been raining. During her lunch break, she went to a Barnes &amp; Noble and took copies from the display table to hide around the store, so it would look like they were selling very fast. A paperback from the day those were released. Another from an airport newsstand. She had been looking at it in JFK and someone had said, “Oh, it’s very good, I enjoyed it a lot.” She likes to think of everything that way, very good, so she’d bought it.</p><p>Then she tells him about how she likes to go onto Amazon and Goodreads after a couple glasses of wine. She’ll report all the one star reviews, then argue with customer service to have them removed. She says, “It’s like this weird hobby of mine,” offhandedly, as though she’s a little embarrassed about it. His throat gets tight, and he feels so massively sad. He thinks: Okay, I do remember what it felt like to love her. I remember why I did.</p><p>Betty begins shelving the books, treating them with care. “I’m admittedly a bit of a fraud,” she says. “I haven’t read it. I’ve always felt incredibly guilty about that.”</p><p>“Oh. Um. That’s okay. I get it. Thanks for buying them anyway. The royalties were appreciated, as you know.” He feels his cheeks get warm. “Sorry, I hope the subject matter didn’t make you uncomfortable.”</p><p>“No, no, nothing like that. Most people have told me I would probably enjoy it. My mom’s read it actually.” Her mouth pulls up a bit. “I believe the word she used was spicy.”</p><p>Jughead pinches the bridge of his nose. “Wonderful.”</p><p>“I’m sure it’s as great as everyone says. It was just very hard any way I tried to approach it. But I wanted to be supportive, so I did what I could.” Betty looks at the books. “I am sorry that I offended you with what I said that day of your book launch.”</p><p>“You didn’t. What you said was perfectly kind.” He shifts his weight between his feet. “This is sort of awkward, but what exactly did I say?”</p><p>“In the voicemail?”</p><p>“Yeah. I’m getting the impression I was less than my best self.”</p><p>“Oh, it wasn’t too bad. The gist was generally to fuck off.” Betty tells him this in a lightly humorous voice, which is how he knows he had said some hurtful things.</p><p>He replies, “Well, that’s not very good.”</p><p>“I have it, if you’d like to hear it? No pressure. I find that it’s useful sometimes to fill in lapses in memory.” He nods and says okay. There doesn’t seem to be another available answer. Betty hands him her phone. It’s warm and the case is slightly sticky. The message is time stamped 12:47 in the morning, and the number is unsaved, not his. But she nods when he asks if she’s sure that’s right, so he taps play.</p><p>“Hello, Betts? Betty?” In the background, a voice, pitchy and female, slurs: “It’s voicemail. You have to go after the <em>beeeeeeeep!</em>” He goes: “Oh yeah, right. Anyhow, hey, it’s Jughead. In case you were wondering. Jones. Calling to check in. ‘M on my way home from this party actually.” There’s a clattering noise, and some shuffling ones. He says, distantly, “Oop,” as the girl yells, “Fucker, did you crack my screen?” He responds, “Will you shut up? I’m talking,” which makes him want to stop listening completely. “Hi, sorry, me again. Jug. So this party, right, ’s for this book. Oh yeah, I wrote this book. Did I say? Gonna be in stores and everything. Forgot if I said. Anyway, wrote the book. Sold the book, signed like so many copies of the book. Partied for the book. And thing is, I did it all without you. All myself. So I guess I wanted to check in. Just wanted, I should say. Let you know you can keep your pride. Also your hope and your congrats and whatever else, because it seems that I don’t actually need it. Or you. Okay, bye.”</p><p>He hands the phone back. He says thanks. He considers leaving her apartment, and begins to examine the possible exits. The cat is on the windowsill, their bags are in front of the door. He could move those things. But when he tries to move himself, he feels rooted, mashed down into his position, completely stuck.</p><p>“So I can see why you’d think I didn’t want you to reach out,” he says eventually. “Listen, I was incredibly drunk that night.”</p><p>Betty smiles. It looks kind. He doesn’t want it. “Yes, I got that, funnily enough.”</p><p>“I was feeling emotional. Big life moment.”</p><p>She laughs a bit. “Yes, I got that too.”</p><p>“I’m sorry. I’m just—” He considers putting his hands in his pockets, but that will draw her attention even though she is already looking at him. He feels like his entire existence is an imposition, that the depth of his embarrassment is enough to make him shrivel into himself and disappear. “Betty, I am really sorry.”</p><p>She nods. “I know you are. It’s okay,” she says. “It was a long time ago.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>For dinner, they heat up a frozen pizza and a Pad Thai Lean Cuisine. Betty finds half a bag of frozen corn in the freezer with a rubber band around it, which she heats with a couple pats of butter. She is staring at the microwave as it spins, so he is surprised that she jumps when a couple kernels pop out of the bowl.</p><p>“It’s corn. It tends to do that,” he says.</p><p>He sits on a few stacked boxes, and they eat. The food is hard and rubbery from being in the freezer too long. After, he washes up the few things they’d used. Betty opens up her computer and begins typing. He goes to his bag, which is by the door. It looks dirty and worn next to hers. He brings them both over to the table. Betty says, “I hope I got everything you need. Sorry if I didn’t.” She’s done alright. There are clothes and toiletries, including a razor which he interprets as a statement. His copy of <em>Ham on Rye. </em>Laptop and charger. No typewriter.</p><p>They work quietly for a bit. Every now and then, Betty sighs, and the space between her brows crunches. She tells him it’s nothing when he asks. After a while, he says, “Come on, tell me. What is it?”</p><p>This time Betty says, “It’s nothing. It’s just Polly stuff.”</p><p>He sits straighter. “Any news there?”</p><p>Polly has been missing for a month. He has taken to politely inquiring if there’s been any update if he is fixing his coffee in the Teacher’s Lounge the same time as Betty, offering hopeful sentiments when she tells him there’s not. Once, arriving back at Archie's off a shift at Pop’s, he saw Betty working in the garage. The door was rolled up. He rapped on it to announce himself, rattling the metal like a soft roll of thunder. “Hey, so I don’t know if you’re aware, but you’ve been leaving the porch light on at night,” he said.</p><p>“Oh,” Betty replied in a slightly embarrassed voice. “Yeah, I know. It’s purposeful. It’s for Polly. It’s sort of a guiding light, if that makes sense. I know it’s dumb, but the twins find it comforting. Is it bothering you? I can talk to them about it if it is.”</p><p>“No, of course not. Leave it on. That’s good, that they’re able to find something to help them through this. I just mentioned it because—” He rubbed his hand behind his neck. “Well, you know, I used to—”</p><p>“Turn it off at night because I’d forget to. Yes, I remember.” Betty smiled, and it seemed like it tired her so much to do it that he considered asking if she needed help with things then, or if she just wanted to talk even. She had a remarkable ability to activate his humanity. But he felt superfluous at the thought. She had undergone training, had other people she was closer with now to talk to. He had nothing to offer. So he said, “Hope you get some good news soon. Night, Betty,” and went to sleep in the house next door.</p><p>Now, Betty shakes her head. “No, nothing new.” Then she gets a shy expression on her face. “Can I borrow your brain for something?” she asks. Jughead says sure. She explains there is a truck stop off the Lonely Highway, near Exit 42. Polly would sometimes deal there. The night she disappeared, she’d been there meeting someone. “Have you heard of it, like back in the day?”</p><p>“Not really so much then. My dad might’ve mentioned it a couple times, but that was it. I heard recently there are some old hideouts near the highway though—caves, abandoned mines, the adjacent folklore.” Betty begins typing, making loud clicking sounds with her keyboard. He shares what he knows. At the end, when she says, “Thank you, Jughead,” like he has done her some impossible favor, he tells her he will let her know if he hears anything more.</p><p>They prepare for bed. When he offers to sleep on the floor, not very enthusiastically, since he knows this will ultimately be unacceptable, Betty says, “Don’t be silly. It’s a big enough bed.” She goes into the bathroom. He hears the tap running and the toilet flushing. When she emerges, her cheeks are pink, like she has run a washcloth over them. The moisturizer she has applied smells slightly like clay.</p><p>“I left a towel out for you. Use whatever you’d like. There’s toothpaste in the medicine cabinet,” she says.</p><p>Her bathroom is small. The shower curtain, mat, and linens are the same shade of gray. It is insanely depressing. He does not know her particular financial situation, but he is surprised by her spartan existence. There is no softness to her life, no plushness, just this place that feels like a punishment. In her medicine cabinet, there are a couple bottles of little creams and cleansers. Some metal beauty tools, the only of which he recognizes is a pair of tweezers. A makeup palette. An orange pill bottle with eleven white pills inside. He picks this up. On the sticker, it says her name, the RX number, and <em>Hydromorphone HCL, take as prescribed</em>. He puts the bottle back. He brushes his teeth, washes his face, and leaves his things straightened neatly on the small ledge of the sink.</p><p>Outside, Betty is in bed and looking at her phone. She is wearing a large gray t-shirt that says <em>FBI</em> on it. She is on the left side of the bed, which is how he remembers she used to sleep on the right. He wonders if this was an explicit choice she made before concluding it wouldn’t really matter either way. He gets into bed and places his glasses on the nightstand. Betty does the same with her phone, then turns slightly on her side to face him. “Hey, when did you get those?”</p><p>“The glasses? Wow. Must’ve been Sophomore year maybe? I honestly can’t remember.”</p><p>“I like them. They make you look distinguished. Older.”</p><p>“I look old now?”</p><p>“Older.”</p><p>He cannot really recall himself without his glasses anymore. It is like his childhood, a period of time he knows happened, but that’s too distant to remember with any specificity now. He starts to feel time in a claustrophobic way then as he realizes he will never be that person again. You changed, you turned over into new iterations of yourself, but you never unfolded into previous ones. You never experienced things in the same way again. It would always be with an updated set of schema. He feels a huge sense of loss at this understanding, and for a moment, it is difficult to look at her. Maybe they are still themselves, but the two people who had loved each other a long time ago are gone forever now. They will never return.</p><p>So he jokes, “Maybe you look old,” because it is easy to.</p><p>Betty waves him off. “I look phenomenal.”</p><p>“Definitely more self-absorbed.” He leans over to examine the top of her head. “You have gray hairs.”</p><p>“I don’t! Stop that!”</p><p>“You do. They’re right here.” He uses his hand to muss up her hair and she squeals and tries to pull the blanket over her head. They laugh for a bit, and when the warmth of that settles over them like a blanket, Betty says goodnight and switches off her lamp. Jughead lays out on his back. Betty is on her side, facing away from him. He feels a strange dissonance within himself, knowing he does not really know her at all but will soon be in a vulnerable state of unconsciousness beside her, knowing that he once had. He finds himself saying, “Hey, so hope you don’t mind my asking, but why do you have Dilaudid?” because of it.</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“In your medicine cabinet. I wasn’t snooping or anything, it was just there.”</p><p>“Oh, that. I had a couple surgeries last October. Broken leg, arm, jaw.”</p><p>“Shit, that must’ve sucked. Sorry you had to go through that.”</p><p>“It’s okay. It was my fault. Occupational hazard.”</p><p>“Training go sideways or something?”</p><p>“Yeah, sort of. I was actually held captive by this serial killer for a couple weeks.”</p><p>“You can just say if I’m prying too much, no need to be sarcastic.”</p><p>“No, I’m really telling you. That’s what happened. You can Google it. There was some regional coverage.”</p><p>He sits up and reaches over her to turn on the lamp. Betty’s nose scrunches as she blinks, adjusting to the light. “Are you serious?”</p><p>“Yeah. It wasn’t great. He got away. I got roughed around a bit.”</p><p>He feels that his face has twisted into an ugly, horrified expression he cannot control. “But you’re okay?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” Betty stretches and puts her arm behind her head. Like this, she looks like she’s talking about a banal inter-office drama, or something else that’s at most tepidly amusing. He feels many things at her attitude, none of which are identifiable. “My leg will still hurt sometimes if I overexert it, but that’s about it.”</p><p>“What, um. What happened? You don’t have to tell me, obviously.”</p><p>“It was stupid. I was going after the guy and I didn’t wait for backup. He got me, moved me somewhere else, held me there for a bit. I got out eventually. Stupid, as I said.”</p><p>“He didn’t… you weren’t, you know—”</p><p>“Raped? No. That wasn’t part of his MO.”</p><p>He presses his hand to his brow. Why had he even asked? Everything else that happened to her was awful enough and maybe the question was insensitive or dismissive of her other traumas. Things seem to be tilted on an axis, operating on different scientific principles. He is unsure of how to act or behave in this new environment. “Was anyone there with you? Like after, in the hospital?”</p><p>“Yeah, my mom came down.” This makes her smile a bit. “She was so terrible, you can’t even imagine. Fussed about everything, made so many scenes. The nurses had this joke that they were taking such good care of me so they could get her out of there faster. And Glen stopped by once or twice, brought soup, work updates, stuff like that.”</p><p>Maybe they will matter in a bit, but lots of things suddenly seem very inconsequential now; who made out with who, who’s screwing who. Who fucking cares. Jughead picks up her hand and holds it. It feels instinctual to him, like it’s the right and only thing to do. “Betty, I am very sorry that happened to you,” he says. “And I’m really glad you made it out of there alive.”</p><p>She squeezes his hand. Then she pulls it away. “Thanks. But don’t worry—I’m okay now.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>On Saturday morning, a little before noon, he sits across from her at a Turkish café called Sini. There is a metal napkin holder on the table, salt and pepper shakers. A small laminated menu card with brunch specials propped between them. Behind a counter, shawarma is rotating slowly on a vertical spit. The restaurant is not very full for a weekend, but delivery men have been coming in to pick up take out orders pretty often, so he guesses business is alright.</p><p>“The Lamb Adana here is really good. Spicy, though,” Betty says. Jughead asks how much even though he’s not interested in it. “Just a bit. You could handle it.” He thinks she recognizes that this is a familiar thing to say, since she glances up at him, then returns staring furiously at the menu.</p><p>“Want to share an app or something?” she asks. “Hummus? It comes with pita.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”</p><p>When the waiter comes by, Jughead orders the chicken pita. It’s cheap. Betty orders the shawarma platter, hummus to share, and cheese fries, which are fries with feta crumbles on top. He thinks this may be a peace offering for the incident that happened earlier at her apartment. The waiter repeats their order and takes their menus away. Betty sips her water, then puts the glass back down, lining the bottom up with the wet ring it left on the paper table cloth. Then she does it again. He cannot suffer through the whole meal with her imitating a toy drinking bird, so he says, “Look about earlier—”</p><p>“We don’t have to talk about it.”</p><p>“That’s great. That’s actually preferable. I’d rather not. But you should know I’m not into drugs or anything. Seeing as I’m staying at your place. Maybe I drink too much sometimes but I don’t have a drug problem.”</p><p>She nods vigorously. Her features blur like a shaken snow globe. “Okay. I believe you. I’m glad. I don’t either.”</p><p>“Good.” He clears his throat. “That’s good, really good. I believe you as well.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The incident started like this. It was morning, and they were getting ready for the day. He was making coffee and giving her crap about her machine, saying things like, “How can you live like this? It’s worse than the kind they put in rent-by-the-hour motels.” Betty was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, fixing her hair. The door was open, and she was complaining good-naturedly every so often about how she was going to chop it all off, it was such a hassle to take care of at this length. She replied, “Don’t be such a coffee snob, it’s too cliched for a writer.” It was very domestic, and he did find himself thinking several times how nice a life they could’ve had together if things had turned out differently.</p><p>After she was satisfied with how her hair looked, Betty emerged from the bathroom and said, “All yours,” with a little smile. She accepted the cup of coffee he handed her, and made an exaggerated <em>mmm</em> sound when she took a sip. Everything was warm and comfortable, and the pantomime of normalcy felt so good that he thought he might lean down and kiss her quickly, just to complete the routine. Maybe even say: Let’s just forget everything before, yeah? You and me, let’s just try again. It could be good like this.</p><p>He showered and dressed. When he went to comb his hair, he looked around for his things and realized Betty had put them away in the medicine cabinet. He decided to shave then. He felt practically compelled to, like if he didn’t, the pleasant mundanity they had created would suddenly become unavailable to him. He enjoyed how his razor looked next to her toothbrush for a moment before reaching to pick it up. Then he saw that the cap on her med bottle was screwed on wrong, matched unevenly in its grooves. So he picked that up instead.</p><p>The bottle was empty now, all eleven pills gone. He felt disoriented when he realized that, shaky and feverish, twisted upside-down, like maybe he had taken one of the pills himself. He thought for sure he was going to be sick. Then he was outside yelling at her, demanding she tell him where they went, what she did to herself, what in God’s name was she thinking. She kept saying innocently, “What, I don’t know what you’re talking about, what?” which made him so angry he thought he might die from it. He tried to remember when she’d gone into the bathroom last, considered whether he had time to call an ambulance or if he should just shove his fingers down her throat himself, but he couldn’t think. Finally, she screamed, “I flushed them, okay? They’re gone now!” It shut him up, probably because he hadn’t heard her speak in anything other than even, dulcet tones. She had a guilty expression on her face. It was how he realized she’d gotten rid of the pills because of him. Of what she assumed about him. That he was some useless, washed up junkie bumming her pain meds, maybe even rifling through her bag, skimming her cash and cards to cut and snort lines with before pocketing. That he’d get high right in front of her like he was incapable of self control.</p><p>So he said: “Fuck you.”</p><p>She said back: “Fuck you too.” Which admittedly he deserved, since he hadn’t thought much better of her. So they had finished getting ready and poured the remainder of the coffee down the sink.</p><p>Now, they are swirling warm pita triangles in a small dish of hummus slicked with olive oil. Betty says they’ll take the car over to the home goods store and pick up a couple boxes so she can pack her things afterwards. Jughead says that’s fine. Truthfully he would rather just sit in her apartment alone but he feels the need to be useful to her, to agree with her plans. He has nothing to offer for the room and board. When the bill comes, he will only be able to contribute a ten-spot, just enough to cover his sandwich.</p><p>At the home goods store, the boxes are piled in flat stacks near the entrance. Betty takes a few, then mentions she needs to find some supplies for her class. Jughead says alright. It is very bright indoors, and it smells faintly of disinfectant and wood. They pass some bathroom displays, standing in neat rows like soldiers. Jughead says, “That’s a nice faucet,” without referring to any one of them. Betty replies, “Yeah, I like it a lot.”</p><p>They are walking past the lighting section when she says out of nowhere, “Did the book not sell well? I thought it did.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I guess I don’t quite understand how your financial situation became what it is.”</p><p>“That’s probably because it’s not yours to understand.”</p><p>Betty begins to stare at her shoes. Jughead feels shame radiate from her, and he regrets his rudeness. She was probably only asking out of concern, since she’d grown up comfortably and therefore had the luxury of understanding finances as an ancillary subject to be discussed under only very specific, limited criteria. Morbid curiosity did not qualify. In any case, she had shooed away the collectors when he’d asked, so he supposed she deserved some sort of explanation.</p><p>“So it’s not my financial situation, exactly,” he says. “The book did fine. City’s expensive though, and the thing about books is that you’ve got to write more of them if you want the money to keep on coming in. Still working on that part. Anyhow, my dad calls me up one day and says he’s in a situation. You know, the way my dad does, like, ‘Boy, I gotta tell you something.’” He glances at her and is pleased to see her smile a bit. “So I’m thinking, okay, the old man is in jail again, he’s fallen off the wagon. I’ll bail him out, get him a lawyer, get him into AA. Except this time, he tells me he’s gotten into some gambling trouble. Real bad shit, people are after him, about to start hacking off limbs, that sort of thing. I didn’t have the money myself, but what do you do except find a way to get it when you get that sort of call from your father? I gave him what I had and borrowed the rest.”</p><p>“He’s okay now, your dad?”</p><p>“Dunno. He’s alive.”</p><p>“Lucky you.”</p><p>His face gets hot. “I’m sorry. That was really insensitive of me to say. Obviously I’m grateful he’s alive and that I know where he is. I didn’t mean to be cavalier about it.”</p><p>Betty nods. “I thought it might’ve been something like that. It didn’t make much sense, you getting yourself into that kind of financial state.”</p><p>He feels relief come over him, some lightness. His sense of failure has been managed internally and completely personally, and so he has often forgotten that the fault is not entirely his. “Thanks,” Jughead says. “That actually means a lot.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the morning, Betty is sitting at the table in a terrycloth bathrobe. It’s Sunday now. Her knees are pulled to her chest, and there is a coffee mug balancing on them. Her hands are wrapped around it. Light falls in even rows through the slatted blinds. Flecks of dust float in the streams. Betty looks soft in this way, blended into the surroundings like lines of charcoal smudged on paper. Jughead sits up, deliberately rustling the sheets so she’ll look at him.</p><p>“Morning. There’s coffee,” she says.</p><p>“Great. Thanks. It smells good.” He combs his fingers through his hair, smoothing down the places it feels unkempt. There are pricks of pain on his arms. They are a mess, angry with red scratches and dried blood. “Hey, so about last night.”</p><p>“What about it?”</p><p>“Did you want to talk, maybe?”</p><p>“Talk about what?”</p><p>“Betty.”</p><p>She smiles at him. “Jughead.”</p><p>“Betts. Come on.”</p><p>“What? Nothing happened.” She nods to the kitchen. “There’s coffee,” she repeats. “Should still be warm. I haven’t been up long.”</p><p>He sets his jaw. So this is how it’s going to be. “Fine,” he says. “Whatever. Suit yourself.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The night before had started out very nicely. He helped Betty pack up her things, stacking books into boxes as she organized her clothes. She was humming to herself, sometimes saying nonsense words to the cat in baby voices as she folded. Things felt nice again. As he moved the copies of his book, he saw that she had tucked the receipts by the dedication page. In one was the New Brat Pack article, too. The pages were glossy and jagged at the edges. In another was a printout with details for a reading and signing he’d done in New York. He wondered if she had thought about stopping by, whether she had but escaped his notice. The receipt was from a bookstore in Centerville, so he thought probably not. She had an even ten copies. It made him feel good to realize that she had cared, intensely ashamed to know he had accused her otherwise.</p><p>After, they drank a very cold bottle of Sancerre that Betty found laying on its side in the back of the fridge. Jughead minimized his intake to polite sips, knowing she was visually measuring them. They talked a bit more about how weird it was to exist this way now, which had the pleasant effect of making things less weird. “I guess it makes sense,” she said. “We never did talk much after.”</p><p>“I don’t know that it would’ve really made a difference.”</p><p>“You never know. It could have. Things make a difference.”</p><p>He laughed a bit. “That’s very philosophical of you.”</p><p>“I do wonder how you’re able to talk to me now. I feel like we’re existing pleasantly, which is unexpected. Aren’t you angry with me?”</p><p>“Because of Archie and what’s going on there, you mean?”</p><p>“Well, yes. And it’s nothing, as I said.”</p><p>He was unsure of how to explain it. He felt that there was so much futility in being angry, he could not even produce its sparks. Maybe they were just screwing at the moment, her and Archie, but eventually they would fall in love, move into a nice house, and have lots of athletically inclined babies with very symmetrical faces and nice teeth. At their wedding, their friends would tell stories about how it took them awhile to get there, but they always knew they would. They were fated. Kismet. These were not exactly unwelcome eventualities, they just made him feel foolish to know he had once thought that maybe they weren’t inevitable. Actually, it was comforting in a way, to know the universe ultimately operated predictably. So what he felt most was an odd sense of closure about everything.</p><p>“No, I’m not angry with you,” he said. “I don’t know, that’s time, I guess. Maturity. Alcohol. It’s an insanely holy trinity, it makes everything okay.”</p><p>They finished the wine and packed for a bit more. Then it was done. Some things were going to a storage unit, some she was selling, but she would arrange it all from Riverdale. Jughead sat on the window ledge with a cigarette and watched how the smoke twisted into the night. Betty brought the dining chair over and sat by him, so he offered her one, then a light. They smoked quietly. After a while she said, “I still don’t feel anything. Do you?” He replied, “A little. But I’m not about to show you how to. It’s a nasty habit.” She put her hand out the window and stubbed out the cigarette on the facade. Then, moving very tentatively, like she was asking permission, she laid her head on his leg. He let her. There was a distinct sense of finality to it, like it was an ending, a goodbye. She sighed heavily, blowing a hole through the line of smoke he exhaled. He tilted his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. His throat was tight and he felt as though he might cry. He thought about what it meant to love someone then, how it changed you each time. It always did, even if only in little ways. In twenty-five years, if someone said her name, if he happened to ask what the date was on her birthday, he would probably always think something like: Betty. God, what a lifetime ago that was. Wonder what she’s up to these days. Wonder where she is. They would only be small moments, just a few seconds of pause before he continued on with his life. But they would happen because he had loved her.</p><p>She’d changed him in bigger ways too. She had hurt him badly and rooted a variant of distrust that had never been there before. But she had also believed in him, supported him, encouraged him in ways that never belittled or humbled him. That made him think more of himself, it opened up and set him down paths he had never considered. He would always be different because of her, and even though he did not know in what ways, she would be because of him as well. He looked at her then. She was just looking out the window, just breathing. He gently rested his hand on her head and thought: You have changed my life.</p><p>When he finished his cigarette, they went to bed. There was nothing left to say or do. He lay awake for a while, knowing it was probably the last time he would ever lay beside her like this again. Then he fell asleep.</p><p>Later in the night, he woke when she kicked him on the shin. It wasn’t very hard, so he just pushed her foot back with his. Then her breathing became heavier, and he sat up. It was completely dark, no light came in from the streets, other windows, shops. It was like it was just them existing in the world. Betty was curled up tight with one arm under the pillow. The lamp on her nightstand cast a shadow over her face. He thought maybe she looked a little agitated, but he couldn’t say for sure. Then without warning she started kicking and screaming. She reminded him of someone having a seizure, or a fish flopping on land, straining to survive. She was screaming so loudly, he couldn’t even hear what she was saying, just the violence of it.</p><p>He pulled her upright and wrapped his arms around her in order to keep her still. Her back was pressed to his chest and she was scratching at him like she was trying to climb free. It occurred to him then he had no idea how to properly comfort her. He was trying to keep her from hurting herself, but maybe he was just making everything worse. He tried to shake her awake, and into her ear, he said: “Betty, wake up. You’re dreaming, it’s okay, you’re just dreaming. It’s me, Betts. It’s Jug. It’s just me. You’re okay, you’re alright.”</p><p>He caught what she was saying eventually: I don’t want to die, over and over again. So he told her she wouldn’t. She was safe, she was with him. When she woke, she sucked in huge mouthfuls of air, as though she had just broken through to the surface after being underwater too long. Then, she started sobbing. They were huge, brutal wails, and he was stupidly afraid if she didn’t stop maybe she really would die from it. She was shaking from the force of it and digging her nails into his arms. At some point he felt his skin pop like it was bubble wrap, and then he thought somewhat detachedly, okay, I guess I’m bleeding now. Still, held her and kept telling her everything was okay. This struck him as a very idiotic thing to say, but he said it anyhow. He pressed his lips to her temple. He didn’t know why he did that. It just felt like the thing to do.</p><p>Betty relaxed against him eventually. Her crying subsided, then stopped. Her breathing evened. It became quiet again, echoless and still. She lay back down and slid her arm under the pillow. She looked exactly as she did before, and Jughead felt unsure anything had even happened. Maybe he was the one dreaming. Then, very quietly, she asked, “Would you mind holding me, please? You can stop once I’m asleep,” and he knew everything was real.</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, sure, no problem,” he replied.</p><p>He didn’t know how she wanted to be held, so he moved a bit closer and loosely put his arm over hers. But then she began to curve herself against him, like she wanted to completely disappear into his body. She took his hand and held it against her heart. The soft movement of it pressed against his palm. “Thank you. I’m sorry,” she said.</p><p>He felt so bad for her then, imagining how many times she had woken terrified with only shadows and boxes as her comfort. He thought about her apology, and even if it was offered because of their specific situation, he felt that no one should ever have to apologize needing comfort. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to be. Just sleep.” He held her and counted her heartbeats until she fell asleep, and then until he did too.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He pours coffee. His mug is blue with a big white Y on it. He finds this exaggeration of humility very pretentious and transparent. When he sits, Betty slides a piece of paper across the table. Jughead glances at it, then sips his coffee. “No,” he says. She picks up her phone like she hadn’t heard him and navigates to her weather app. Irritatingly remarks, “Supposed to be sunny out today.”</p><p>“I said no.”</p><p>“Should make for a nice drive back.”</p><p>“This is none of your business.”</p><p>“Raining tomorrow though.”</p><p>He sets his mug on the table. “How often do you dream like that?”</p><p>“My bad. I was looking at D.C.”</p><p>“That’s twice I’ve seen it happen now.”</p><p>“It’s just cloudy in Riverdale tomorrow. No rain.”</p><p>“You’re starting to piss me off.”</p><p>“Then you know what to do.”</p><p>He picks up the paper. Betty puts her phone down. “Where’d you get thirty grand anyway?”</p><p>“I saved a bit myself. Most of it is from my grandmother. She died a few years back.”</p><p>“Sorry to hear.”</p><p>The check is tinted blue. It says Elizabeth A. Cooper in the top left corner, her address. The bank’s watermark is in the center. It’s made out to Forsythe P. Jones III, and on the memo line, she has written the word <em>for</em>, and doodled a little crown after it. He folds the check and passes it back. “Thanks, but I can’t. You had to know I’d say that.”</p><p>“Yeah. You’re still going to take it though.” She sips her coffee, and then her voice becomes very slow and measured. “Juggie, here’s the thing. You’re fucked. You really are. I’ve thought a lot about it, and this is pretty much your only way out. Those guys aren’t going anywhere. They’ll catch up eventually, and you know how that goes. They’ll take out your kneecaps, maybe, if you’re lucky. Or they’ll kill you if you’re not. Or, you’ll kill them. You can’t fix this by yourself. If you could, you would’ve already. You don’t have friends, you don’t have options. There’s just me.”</p><p>“I could leave. Stay here in DC, catch a train, get a job somewhere else. I have everything I need. I don’t have to go back. There isn’t anything keeping me there.”</p><p>“That’s true. It’s fine if you do, I won’t try to stop you. But you’ll still take this.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>She looks at him. There is a deep, infinite sadness in her expression. “Because I’m asking you to.”</p><p>Immediately, he fills all the way up with cold. He feels exposed, flayed open like a dissected animal. Maybe she feels guilty about things, maybe she still loves him, or just cares a little bit, or something in between. He doesn’t know her motivations, but she seems to understand his, to possess a certain knowledge of him that even he may not have. She will make him feel small and pathetic. Again. This will unwillingly tether him to her, place him in her debt. The last remaining threads of care he has for her will be severed with the knowledge she knew she could use them against him, and that she did. She has calculated all this and decided that is okay. He looks at her. Now, all he is able to think is: There is nothing good left between us.</p><p>“This is fucked up, Betts,” he says softly. “You know that, don’t you?”</p><p>“I know. I do know that, and I’m sorry about it.” Her eyes flutter shut. “I will make it up to you.”</p><p>“Maybe you can’t.”</p><p>“Then I can’t.”</p><p>He tosses the check onto the table. “If I take it, you’ll go see someone. Back in Riverdale. A therapist or whatever.”</p><p>She shrugs, lifting one shoulder very slightly. “If you say so.”</p><p>“I’m not playing, Betty. Believe me, I have very little to live for. You’ll do this. Otherwise, no deal.”</p><p>A muscle in her jaw moves. “It’s unnecessary. I’m okay. I already told you that.”</p><p>He puts his arm on the table. She looks over to the window. After a while, she says, “Fine,” very sharply. Betty takes a pen from her robe pocket and rolls it across the table. He signs the back of the check and retrieves his phone to deposit it. “Pleasure doing business,” she says. He tears up the paper and piles the scraps in front of her. He dresses, packs his things, and leaves. She sits there, sipping her coffee.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He is at a Starbucks. He had gone there after leaving Betty’s apartment and purchased a small cup of coffee with the cash he had left. He is sitting at a table near the back of the store. It had initially been sticky and dusted with leftover crumbs. This made him angry, so he got a napkin and cleaned the surface. He didn’t feel any better after that, so he took off his jacket. Then he saw his arms, still red and scratched up; branded. This made him want to peel off his skin. He didn’t feel right in it. He put his jacket back on. Eventually, he took out his computer and began to search for bus tickets. He thought about slipping back into the City and becoming faceless in the masses, to L.A. where she’d lied and said he was. He could be there in two days.</p><p>A little before noon, Betty texts him. This makes him angry, too. She is invading his technology, staining his skin, tying him to her like a leashed animal. He doesn’t want to know what she had to say, so he flips his phone over. He finds out anyhow. The message syncs and cuts across his computer screen. The inescapable pollution of her almost makes him laugh. Betty’s message says: <em>I’m heading back in an hour. Let me know if you want a ride. </em></p><p>He drinks his coffee. It’s tepid now. He does not want anything from her, just for her to leave him alone. He fantasizes more about where he can go. He feels a sense of freeness as he follows those paths. In California, he can become a massive douchebag, drink green juices, and tell people who didn’t want to listen about a screenplay he wasn’t writing. In Florida, he can get a leathery tan. The idea of not being himself is very appealing.</p><p>He tosses the paper cup into the trash and gathers his things. He knows where he will go. This is why the fantasy of being elsewhere had been so alluring, because he knew it could never be. He has to go back so that he can move on. He has left things unfinished there, made commitments and promises that he feels compelled to follow through with. He has very little left of value now, only intangibles. Basically only his word. If he does not keep it, then he will truly have nothing at all.</p><p>When he reaches the street where they had parked, Betty is loading the last of her things into the car. Toffee is in the pet carrier on the sidewalk. She starts closing the trunk but stops when she sees him. Jughead places his bag on a box labeled <em>books</em> and shuts the door. “I can drive,” is all he says.</p><p>“It’s fine, I don’t mind.”</p><p>“Please let me drive.”</p><p>She hands him the keys. In the car, she sets the pet carrier on her lap and lets Toffee stick her head out. The space feels small, like it’s collapsing in on him. He puts the key in the ignition. The dash lights up. On the gas meter, the arrow bobs near empty. He supposes they will have to stop to refill, and that Betty will pay for that too. Jughead takes some breaths, then says, “You knew I would take the money.”</p><p>“You got in the car when I asked.”</p><p>“You’re not actually sorry, are you?”</p><p>“No. Not in the way you want me to be.”</p><p>Betty is staring ahead. Outside, a biker passes by his window. A woman in a long duster coat crosses the street ahead. He wonders about their lives. “Why did you come home?”</p><p>“To get my cat. I couldn’t—”</p><p>“To Riverdale.”</p><p>“Oh. God, I don’t know. I wish I did. I guess that means there was no nobility in it. Maybe to figure out where I would go after?” She looks at him. “Why did you?”</p><p>He puts his hand on her headrest as he looks behind to reverse. “Same thing, I guess.” He begins to drive, tracking the way back on the roads that had led them here.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Quotes on the board in order are from: <em>The Outsiders</em> by S.E. Hinton, <em>The Great Gatsby </em>by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and <em>On the Road</em> by Jack Kerouac. The song they’re listening to in the car is <em>American Pie</em> by Don McLean. The book Betty packs is <em>Ham on Rye</em> by Charles Bukowski.</p><p>Thanks very much for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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